If you are interested in mobile ministry, consider joining me in a couple weeks at the 2013 Mobile Ministry Forum Consultation (Orlando, FL). The Mobile Ministry Forum is a network of over 70 organizations working together to use mobile technology for the advance of the Good News of Jesus Christ.

On December 9th-11th, these pioneers in mobile internet ministry will be giving TED-style presentations, panel discussions, ministry field reports, workshop breakouts, and networking time. Keynotes include:

We Go Where They Are – Ken CochrumYou see the potential for the internet, social media, mobile technology, and other digital innovation to help with the fulfillment of the Great Commission, and you want to be available and used by God to help new movements start and grow. Maybe you’ve heard a few stories, checked out a few resources. But how do you connect with a culture that is native to the digital world?

Every Tribe Every Nation; Eradicating Bible Poverty – Gary Nelson
The mission of the Every Tribe Every Nation® (ETEN) alliance: Partnering to unleash the life-giving message of God’s Word to all people in their own language and in a format they can engage with so lives can be transformed. And for the first time in history, we have the means to make that goal a reality. Roads and ships, pens and paper have given way to computers, cell phones, tablets, and print on demand. The door is open for the Bible to cause true transformation everywhere.

Trends in Digital Religion and Religious App Culture – Heidi Campbell
Dr Campbell will present an overview of notable findings from scholars working in the study of Digital Religion in relation to how people practice religion in digital culture. These observation will be reflect upon in light of systematic survey of religious apps, which seeks to identify trends related key design features and motivations influencing the creation of and user engagement with religious apps.

Making the Move to Mobile – Brandon Honsalek

Faith Comes By Hearing: Digital Bible Platform
Faith Comes By Hearing has been a digital innovator on the mobile platform with their very successful Bible.is app as well as the Digital Bible Platform. Hear the story of their digital transition and the resources they now offer.

If you’re going, let me know. I’d love to connect. And if you’re unable to travel to Orlando, consider registering as a remote participant (only $25).

Every year in the United States, countless churches gear up in the fall for Christmas services, plays, concerts, and other big holiday events. But it is more than just pageantry.

People are more likely to attend church around Christmas and Easter, and many churches have found that special events are one of the best ways to turn this likelihood into a reality.

This doesn’t mean that every church needs to run off and start planning a big production. God will reach people through hundreds of ways this Christmas. But if your church is planning a special event this year, consider using ticketing software.

Special events require extra manpower and effort. But some churches have learned the workload can be eased with the right technology.

Benefits of Ticketing Software

Ticketing software is a versatile tool that offers both convenience and efficiency. Here are 4 key benefits:

Easy Access: Offering tickets online and at a box office makes it easier to get tickets, which often boosts attendance.

Better Coordination: ServiceU’s ticket management provides early attendance forecasts, which helps churches more effectively staff and plan their events as well as determine if additional performances should be added.

Free Up Staff to Love on People: Because ServiceU streamlines administrative tasks, churches are able to reduce their ticketing staff members and free up more staff to be able to interact with and love on attendees.

If you aren’t familiar with it, Code for the Kingdom is an event where designers, developers, and strategists work in teams for 48 hours to create digital tools for God’s Kingdom. Each team has access to on-site mentors specializing in various technology and ministry niches. And in the end, $10,000 will be awarded to participants.

This 2nd hackathon is themed around confronting the challenges facing children around the world. However, any ministry tech ideas are welcome to participate.

There will be two project groups: (1) new ideas that emerge from the hackathon and (2) existing apps that are already in development.

Blogging Services (hosting provided):

#2 :: FIND A DOMAIN (if allowed)

As long as it is relevant, the shorter the domain is the better. A short domain is quick and easy to type, which will save you time in the long run and reduce the probability of you and your visitors mistyping it. Some of the tools

#3 :: DESIGN YOUR BLOG

Being a web designer or hiring one is no longer necessity. WordPress has thousands of template designs for sale and for free that are not too complicated to implement. If you are just starting out with blogging, we typically recommend finding an inexpensive theme/template (under $50). If you are just starting out, but do have a design budget, we typically recommend spending it on branding (logo and brand usage guidelines) rather than development.

#5 :: HAVE QUALITY CONTENT

An aesthetically well-designed blog may entice visitors to linger for the first visit, but quality content is what will get those visitors to keep coming back. If you need topics, visit these resources:

#6 :: STUDY BLOGGING

If you want people to read your quality content, study the science of successful blogging and copywriting. Writing for a blog is different than writing for a book or magazine. My advice:

Unless you are blogging for personal reasons, focus on optimizing the reader experience. Offer only quality content. And make it scannable by using short paragraphs, bold text, and bullet points. Use as few words as possible without compromising quality (needless words waste readers’ time). And if possible, post consistently often.

#7 :: MARKET YOURSELF

With blogging, two of your most powerful marketing opportunities are Search Engine Optimization and leveraging social media. Last year, 57% of ChurchRelevance.com’s traffic came from search engines. You should be using these resources:

Google Keyword Tool – discover which keywords and phrases are searched for the most. I use this often. In fact, three highly-searched keyphrases are in this post’s title.

It is remarkable to see church technology surge over the past decade. Websites and church management systems were once the luxury of large churches, but now they’re treated as fundamental necessities by even church plants.

And the underlying byproduct of these tools is data – deep reservoirs of data offering new ministry insights and potential.

But is data good? With the right heart attitude and priorities, yes.

How Data Helps People and Churches

Data analytics is (1) collecting, (2) inputting, (3) protecting, and (4) mining information to gain a better understanding of cultural and spiritual needs as well as gain insight into how to run our spiritual races better. ACTIVE Faith, the creator of Fellowship One, offers one of the most robust data reporting tools available for churches. To help you better understand reporting, they are offering a free downloadable checklist of Questions You Should Ask Every Church Management Software Provider About Church Data Reporting.

Keep in mind that man’s metrics cannot measure heart attitude or spiritual fruit. Only God does that. Data analytics can, however, give us insights into the probability of such spiritual successes.

In other words, we still desperately need God and His guidance in our ministries. First, we listen to and obey the Holy Spirit. Then we can use data analytics within the boundaries of the calling we’ve been given. The real pitfall in data analytics is if we put our analysis of the data first and God last (or leave Him out of the equation).

FOR EXAMPLE:
Imagine God has given you a passion and burden to reach middle school students. You do not have any specific guidance other than this, so you experiment with 4 new events and programs. Attendance may be good at all of them and, thus, seemingly successful, but your data analytics report that one approach is far more successful at getting the attendance plugged in to long-term discipleship. All 4 events fit within the boundaries of God’s guidance, but because of your data reporting, you are able to focus your time, money, and resources on the approach that is more fruitful and better stewardship.

THE EXCEPTION:
Imagine the same situation where your data reporting shows that one approach is better, but then God guides you to instead focus one an approach that performed dismally at long-term discipleship commitment. It doesn’t matter if it doesn’t make sense in our eyes. Just obey the new, narrowed scope that God has given you.

Of course, there are plenty of other possibilities. In fact, the world of data analytics can offer fresh perspectives across a wide array of ministry applications.

Good data reporting helps churches respond proactively not just reactively, but the key is knowing how to do data reporting well.

Data Reporting The Way It Should Be

Reporting is the physical process of mining a database for its hidden insights. And in order to maximize the use of data, you’ll need a robust reporting tool. With such a tool, leaders can identify individual history of:

attendance

giving

serving

annual commitment renewal

spiritual growth steps (e.g., baptism)

leadership steps (e.g., small group leadership)

Such data reporting offers leaders touchpoints to assess challenges, understand successes, and remember history (particularly the history of individual volunteers or church members). And the larger a church grows, the more helpful data reporting is.

If a children’s ministry knows a child hasn’t visited within the past month, a teacher can call the family to see if everything is okay. It is a thoughtful gesture that not only helps teachers connect with parents but also can present opportunities for prayer in cases where a family illness or crisis caused the absence.

Don’t forget ACTIVE Faith is offering a free downloadable checklist of Questions You Should Ask Every Church Management Software Provider About Church Data Reporting.

FaithVillage helps churches engage their congregations around online community and content. It’s free. It’s scalable. And congregations can access it 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.

FaithVillage launched in February 2012, but its roots go back much further. Baptist Standard Publishing, a leader in Christian journalism for over 125 years and creator of FaithVillage, started asking how they can reach emerging generations and leverage online media to resource churches and disciple believers in their individual growth.

How do we help churches meet people where they’re at and in a way that sustains engagement?

This is not a replacement for Facebook or church websites. It is a complement. It is not a church management or communications platform. Instead, the creators of FaithVillage realized that the key to jump starting sustainable online church community is content because content is what keeps bringing people back. Content makes it easier to interact. And it is this mixture of repeat visits and engagement that creates a nurturing environment ripe for community.

Bringing Them Back with Content

Few churches have the manpower to create loads of weekly content, so FaithVillage has lined up 700+ content providers to keep people coming back and lighten your load with content for inspiration, spiritual growth, and volunteer training. Now you can still create content for your congregation and even upload it into FaithVillage, but you are also much more free to shift your efforts to other needs and opportunities.

Connecting Them with Community

Community on FaithVillage is two parts – private and open. Your church is able to create a private space of online groups for Bible study, mission teams, specific ministries like youth, and small groups. You can also make these groups public for everyone to join. At the same time, FaithVillage is an open community where friends from different churches can interact and enjoy content together. This approach to community helps increase overall engagement.

Additional FaithVillage Features

Custom landing page for your church

Invite and message members of your church

Create and manage and unlimited number of groups

Collaborative file sharing with your church and its groups

Event scheduling

Create teen-only or adult-only groups

Photo galleries

Content flagging

and more

Plus, to accommodate its growing audience of 40,000 users, FaithVillage is currently working on a mobile site, Android app, and iPhone app. There are other great features in the pipeline, too, but you’ll just have to stay tuned for those.

(1) There’s No Silver Bullet

There is no perfect product that is right for all churches. In fact, there may not even be one product that has all the features that your church wants. This is a common pitfall.

Don’t expect the perfect product. Rather identify the most important features to your church, focus on them, and don’t get distracted by flashy features.

(2) Buy for Your Future

Buying for today may not help you tomorrow. When evaluating a tech product, ask yourself:

Is it built to scale with your growth?

Is it capable of giving you the advanced features you will want once you get past the learning curve of its basic features?

Is it built on a platform that allows other types of technology to connect to it, which creates expanded functionality for your database?

Is its reputation and scope such that other companies want to build on its platform?

(3) Determine Your Ease vs. Power Balance

Do you want software that’s easy to use or that’s powerful? While this isn’t a pure either/or choice, it is important to realize you cannot get both robust and super simple in the same package.

Robust software can do more but comes with an unavoidable learning curve that is much longer. Simple software is easy to use and learn but equally limited in its functionality. So would you rather be frustrated by complexity or limitations?

Be wary of products claiming to offer both simplicity and robustness.

(4) Ask the Right Questions

Be sure you know what questions to ask when comparing software options. ACTIVE Faith is offering a free checklist of 12 questions to ask church management software providers on the topic of transitioning your data into a new system.

Compare more than just the obvious features. Investigate how technologies vary in their uptime, security, and cloud-based datacenters. This free checklist will guide you through those more complex questions.

Lastly, don’t forget to pray.

Ideally, you’ve already heightened your sensitivity to the leading of the Holy Spirit by investing adequate time abiding in Christ. That is, you are regularly spending time one-on-one with God and delighting in Him through prayer, worship, and Scripture. If you’re at this place, then praying about technology choices and hearing God’s leading will be much easier.

If you aren’t there yet spiritually, don’t become discouraged. You can still pray about these choices, but starting today, also start abiding in Christ more, so that you can better sense the Holy Spirit’s guidance when you need it in the future.

In recap, spend your time in prayer and researching the facts. Don’t get distracted by marketing hype or unneeded slick features. And do not procrastinate.